Feeling woozy about the fortune you’ve just pumped into your gas tank? Drivers around the world share the sensation.
Consumers, gas retailers and governments are wrestling with a new energy order, where rising oil prices play a larger role than ever in the daily lives of increasingly mobile people. But as the cost of crude mounts, the effect on the price at the pump varies startlingly--from Venezuela, where gas is cheaper than water, to Turkey, where a full tank can cost more than a domestic plane ticket.

High taxes in Europe and Japan have long accustomed consumers to staggering pump prices, which now are testing new pain.

According to AP, taxes and subsidies are the main reasons for the differences, along with lesser factors such as limited oil refining capacity and hard-to-reach geography that push up prices.
High taxes in Europe and Japan have long accustomed consumers to staggering pump prices, which now are testing new pain thresholds--and it could have been even worse, if a strong euro hadn’t cushioned some of the blow. As a result, plenty of European adults never even bother to learn to drive, preferring cheap mass transit to cumbersome cars.
Subsidies in emerging economies such as China and India, meanwhile, shield consumers but hurt governments, which must find a way to afford rising market prices for oil.
Increasingly, they can’t. Indonesians are staging protests against shrinking gasoline subsidies in a nation where nearly half the population of 235 million lives on less than $2 a day. And there are now 887 million vehicles in the world, up from 553 million vehicles just 15 years ago, and on track to nearly double to a billion by 2012, according to London-based consultancy Global Insight.

Tax Burden
In Europe, taxes are often the focus, since the high tax burden means crude itself is a smaller part of the burden.
“The pain of a rise in prices is much less in Europe, because we may be paying a lot more here, but the rise in a percentage sense is a lot smaller,“ said Julius Walker, oil analyst at the Paris-based International Energy Agency.
The United States, with its relatively low taxes, is considered to have retail prices closer to what energy data charts call the “real cost“ of gasoline--which is closely linked to the price of oil.
So as oil prices have soared, average US prices have gone up 144 percent in the past five years-, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Over the same period, gas prices in France went up 117 percent to $9.66 a gallon.
French fishermen and farmers, who need fuel for their trawlers and tractors, say their livelihoods are threatened by soaring prices and have blocked oil terminals around France and shipping traffic on the English Channel to demand government help. Italian, Portuguese and Spanish fisherman joined them and went on strike Friday. British and Bulgarian truckers are staging fuel protests, too.
Russia is proof that big oil-producing nations are not in any better shape when it comes to gasoline prices. Gas in the world’s No. 2 oil producer runs about $3.68 a gallon-- nearly that in the United States, where the average wage is about six times higher.
Some policymakers in less oil-flush nations look to Brazil’s use of ethanol as a potential solution. Ethanol from sugarcane is widely available in the world’s No. 1 sugar producer and its 190 million people. Eight out of every 10 new cars sold are flex-fuel models that run on pure ethanol, gas or any combination of the two. The price for ethanol in Sao Paulo is currently running about half the price of gas, which runs $5.67 per gallon.
In Japan, gas station owners say some customers aren’t filling up their tanks all the way.
Americans, too, are beginning to trim their hearty gas appetites.

Scientists and economists have urged the United States to pass laws to cut greenhouse gases, as the Senate prepared to debate a sweeping climate change bill that is opposed by the White House, AFP reported. Highlighting the US failure to enact federal laws to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) issued a statement signed by 1,700 experts calling for “swift and deep cuts.“
“The longer we wait, the harder and more costly it will be to limit climate change,“ said the statement, which calls for a reduction in US emissions of 80 percent below 2000 levels by 2050.
“The first step on this path should be reductions on the order of 15-20 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, which is achievable and consistent with sound economic policy.“
The statement was released ahead of a debate in the Senate Monday on environmental legislation known as the Lieberman-Warner bill, after sponsors Senator John Warner and Joe Lieberman. President George W. Bush opposes it.
The bill calls for a “cap and trade“ system that would make it more expensive for industries to pollute.

Representatives of 26 member states of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic System (LAES) convened in Caracas on Friday to discuss how to address the current food crisis.
LAES President Geronimo Cardozo addressed the opening ceremony, saying it is necessary to find the root cause of the current world food crisis, which has seen the prices of as many as 32 agricultural products including rice, wheat and cereal hiking, causing the death of about 25,000 people each day, People.com reported. The crisis was caused by world economic disorder, Cardozo said.
The LAES president said the meeting aims to help Latin American and Caribbean governments reach a common position for the summit of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to be held in Rome on June 3-5, with the theme of “food security, climate change and bioenergy.“
He said during the upcoming Rome FAO summit, LAES will propose to form a regional alliance to tackle the world food crisis. Since its establishment 33 years ago, LAES has cooperated with various governments in solving a wide range of issues including energy crisis, demographic problems and water shortage, he added.

The Indian economy grew by a faster-than-expected 8.8 percent from January to March compared with a year earlier.
The growth was driven by a strong performance from the service and construction sectors. But overall, the rate of expansion is slowing and economists are concerned about high inflation caused by rising food and fuel prices, BBC reported.
Growth is expected to continue to slow this year, but will remain higher than most other economies in the world. “There will be deceleration this year coming from industry and high interest rates,“ said economist Saugata Bhattacharya, from the Mumbai-based Axis Bank.
“Industrial impulses will be curtailed. However, there will be a partial offsetting if agriculture and monsoons will be good,“ he said.
The construction sector expanded significantly, growing by 12.6 percent between January and March, compared with 7.1 percent during the previous three months. Growth in the manufacturing sector slowed to 5.8 percent, as against 9.6 percent in the previous quarter - a rate of increase that would be the envy of many developed economies.

A quarter of Germany’s state rail firm is to be privatized after the country’s politicians gave the go-ahead.
The long-disputed plan will see a 25 percent stake in Deutsche Bahn’s passenger and freight services arm sold to investors, raising between 5 billion and 8 billion euros, BBC wrote.
But the country’s tracks and stations will remain in public hands.
Some politicians hope to sell off 49 percent of Deutsche Bahn but this is opposed by other Bundestag members while unions oppose any form of privatization.
A public offering has been expected for a number of years, but disputes between Germany’s governing coalition parties have led to long delays.
The proposed sale of one of Germany’s last state-owned assets has been a controversial one, with claims that the privatization could lead to thousands of job cuts.